The Work Beneath the Credential: Reflections on Leaving the Provisional Registry
This March, my provisional status as a member of the Alberta College of Social Workers was lifted. This means that my required hours being supervised by a social work clinician are complete. It’s a meaningful professional milestone, and I’m proud of the work that brought me here. However, I don’t see it as an ending. Engaging in supervision, no matter my years of experience as a therapist, is aligned with my value of personal integrity. To practice skillfully, I think it’s essential to find spaces to learn and change that are grounded in relationship. The truth is, invisible power relations act on relational dynamics. Finding ways to perceive what is invisible is an ongoing journey.
Supervision is often viewed as a safeguard, and it is an important one. It protects the public and supports developing clinicians. But at its best, it is also relational, because the practice of therapy is about learning how to relate in ways that foster repair where there has been rupture. Supervision offers a parallel space for that learning, where my own relational patterns, assumptions, and unconscious cultural training can come into view. The most meaningful thread running through my process of supervision so far has been seeking cultural humility.
“Cultural competence” is a term we use often in this field, but competence implies arrival. It suggests that with enough education or exposure, we can see how culture affects individual points of view and respond with confidence. Cultural humility assumes something more realistic. Our identities, histories, and social locations continue to shape what we see and what we overlook, even when we are well-intentioned and experienced.
As a therapist racialized as white and positioned as cisgender, that has meant trying to turn my attention to how power operates quietly in the therapy room. It is present in what I interpret as resilience, in how I pace conversations, and in the moments when I decide whether or not to name systemic factors. It has also meant noticing how easily broader cultural forces can be reduced to individual narratives if I am not actively resisting that drift.
None of this unfolds dramatically. It involves slowing my thinking down, being open to being questioned and repairing when something misses. The work is iterative and often quiet, but it shapes how I sit with clients in meaningful ways.
Coming off the provisional registry does not change that orientation. Mandated supervision has ended, but my engagement with intentional supervision has not. Continuing to show up in reflective spaces, whether through formal supervision or consultation, is less about checking a professional box and more about personal and professional authenticity. It helps ensure that the way I practice remains consistent with the values I name: accountability, cultural humility, and respect for the complexity clients carry.
Credentials matter. They represent training and oversight, but they do not replace the ongoing work of examining one’s own lens. For me, that work remains active not because it is required, but because it is part of practicing with integrity.
